Only peak power is reported, which can exaggerate how much power Intel chips use since they have a higher power level over the TDP. They should've reported average power from a sample of workloads. Having how long each test ran would also be good to derive average energy usage.
Many thanks for the review. I'm surprised you ran it with such little ram though. 128GB for 96 cores. That's barely more than 1GB per core. The workloads I'd be looking to use this on would be needing 8GB per core at least. It makes me wonder if the performance was somewhat limited by insufficient ram capacity? If these benchmarks aren't limited by such limited ram capacity, then I also think that you should look to get some new workstation benchmarks that are more memory intensive? We never seem to see the benefits of more memory channels in the benchmarks you use, which always surprises me.
That's actually typical scaling with higher core count workstations. While the raw RAM quantity is higher than the average home PC, the per-core quantity is a lot lower as is the per-core memory bandwidth based on lots o' CPUs and not so many memory channels.
Up until this generation with the 96-core part, Threadripper Pro has always matched the top desktop part in terms of memory channels per core. In terms of memory capacity per core, they far exceed standard desktop parts as they can have up to 2TB of RDIMM's. Which is several times more memory capacity per core than the desktop parts. However this review has chosen to review the processor with 1/20th of its maximum memory capacity which just seems odd to me and suggests that they are not testing it in its intended workload and/or limiting its performance compared to the lower core count processors which they've given the same amount of total ram.
To be fair, that's probably a decision at HP and not Anandtech. Anandtech hasn't purchased hardware for review in ages and is beholden to test whatever is sent to them (probably distributed by Future between AT and Tom's or shipped direct to AT - just guess on the distribution channel here) so they really can't be as flexible about that since there's just not any sort of money for reinvesting into reviews.
Those thermals are pretty bad. Highly likely to throttle after a year in a dusty warm office. Are there alternate thermal profiles to allow for higher fan speeds?
It's under OEM warranty and the buyers probably don't really care overly much about that sort of thing since it's some corporate entity's purchasing office meeting the demands of workstation-users asking for things and getting whatever HP/Dell/etc have on the shelf.
With PCIe4 drives and much smaller heatsinks i get 7 GB/s and 40-43 C maximum at peak, what throttling you are talking about with their 3-4 GB/s speed which is a half of the peak speed of almost all current PCIe4 NVMe drives? By the way that 3-4 GB/s speeds were obtained on CrystalDiskMark or something like that. When you will try to really copy or move actual files you will barely get 1GB/s :)))
What a shame, after 20 years and 20 million complaints, Anandtech was still not able to create editable and deletable user comments. What a shame, the tech forum does not know how to create websites
Sometimes it's amusing to go back to old articles and read predictions people have posted. If you don't want mistakes in your comments, slow down and ensure that what you're posting is what you're intending to post. Don't blame this site for your errors.
"However things are more limited with AMD cards due to the W7900's size: only a single instance of the triple-wide card can fit in the Z6 G5 A."
It seems like there should be room for two W7900 graphics cards: one in the top cage, and another in the bottom cage. Unless the top cage's slots do not support graphics cards for some reason. Were you able to ask about that?
Pricing data point. Just built an epic 32/64 core 768mb L3 cache with 12 channel x 32gb ram workstation for $9000, could have saved some. Money off that if I had shopped around outside one main parts vendor.
This is for simulation, need all the memory bandwidth we can get.
Pretty funny is that on EBAY there is little interest in numerous AMD 96-core EPYC 9654 which now go for less than $2k, all are paying twice or more for 48-core 9474F. Poor singe core performance at their low clocks is probably the reason. The cheap consumer 7995X beats them all here and is only 2-2.5 times slower at multithread at 5% the price according to cpubenchmark dot net website
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yankeeDDL - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
So the Xeon is almost 2x slower at almost 2x power.It's amazing how far behind Intel has fallen.
TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
If only people were still doing workstation rendering on CPU's....TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
If only people did things other then rendering on CPUs.schujj07 - Thursday, December 14, 2023 - link
You mean rendering or editing programs like Adobe Premiere? Premiere is still mainly CPU bound.xenol - Monday, December 18, 2023 - link
Only peak power is reported, which can exaggerate how much power Intel chips use since they have a higher power level over the TDP. They should've reported average power from a sample of workloads. Having how long each test ran would also be good to derive average energy usage.In addition, Intel's a process node behind TSMC.
Rοb - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
> "We have been informed that the configuration we've reviewed today costs around $19,849.".Using the link you provided, choosing the base configuration and only changing the processor, the price is U$25,672.00.
Bare bones, with 16 cores, start around 5K.
Greg13 - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
Many thanks for the review. I'm surprised you ran it with such little ram though. 128GB for 96 cores. That's barely more than 1GB per core. The workloads I'd be looking to use this on would be needing 8GB per core at least. It makes me wonder if the performance was somewhat limited by insufficient ram capacity? If these benchmarks aren't limited by such limited ram capacity, then I also think that you should look to get some new workstation benchmarks that are more memory intensive? We never seem to see the benefits of more memory channels in the benchmarks you use, which always surprises me.PeachNCream - Friday, December 15, 2023 - link
That's actually typical scaling with higher core count workstations. While the raw RAM quantity is higher than the average home PC, the per-core quantity is a lot lower as is the per-core memory bandwidth based on lots o' CPUs and not so many memory channels.Greg13 - Saturday, December 16, 2023 - link
Up until this generation with the 96-core part, Threadripper Pro has always matched the top desktop part in terms of memory channels per core. In terms of memory capacity per core, they far exceed standard desktop parts as they can have up to 2TB of RDIMM's. Which is several times more memory capacity per core than the desktop parts. However this review has chosen to review the processor with 1/20th of its maximum memory capacity which just seems odd to me and suggests that they are not testing it in its intended workload and/or limiting its performance compared to the lower core count processors which they've given the same amount of total ram.PeachNCream - Sunday, December 17, 2023 - link
To be fair, that's probably a decision at HP and not Anandtech. Anandtech hasn't purchased hardware for review in ages and is beholden to test whatever is sent to them (probably distributed by Future between AT and Tom's or shipped direct to AT - just guess on the distribution channel here) so they really can't be as flexible about that since there's just not any sort of money for reinvesting into reviews.SanX - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
Beating 7980X by whopping 10% at only $5000 more?qwertymac93 - Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - link
Those thermals are pretty bad. Highly likely to throttle after a year in a dusty warm office. Are there alternate thermal profiles to allow for higher fan speeds?PeachNCream - Friday, December 15, 2023 - link
It's under OEM warranty and the buyers probably don't really care overly much about that sort of thing since it's some corporate entity's purchasing office meeting the demands of workstation-users asking for things and getting whatever HP/Dell/etc have on the shelf.bwj - Friday, December 15, 2023 - link
It is clearly throttling, right out of the box, as do all CPUs made in the last 15 years.SanX - Friday, December 15, 2023 - link
With PCIe4 drives and much smaller heatsinks i get 7 GB/s and 40-43 C maximum at peak, what throttling you are talking about with their 3-4 GB/s speed which is a half of the peak speed of almost all current PCIe4 NVMe drives? By the way that 3-4 GB/s speeds were obtained on CrystalDiskMark or something like that. When you will try to really copy or move actual files you will barely get 1GB/s :)))SanX - Friday, December 15, 2023 - link
OOps sorry, mixed this discussion with the one on NVMe enclosure in another article :((((SanX - Friday, December 15, 2023 - link
What a shame, after 20 years and 20 million complaints, Anandtech was still not able to create editable and deletable user comments. What a shame, the tech forum does not know how to create websitesOxford Guy - Friday, January 12, 2024 - link
Sometimes it's amusing to go back to old articles and read predictions people have posted. If you don't want mistakes in your comments, slow down and ensure that what you're posting is what you're intending to post. Don't blame this site for your errors.mark625 - Thursday, December 14, 2023 - link
"However things are more limited with AMD cards due to the W7900's size: only a single instance of the triple-wide card can fit in the Z6 G5 A."It seems like there should be room for two W7900 graphics cards: one in the top cage, and another in the bottom cage. Unless the top cage's slots do not support graphics cards for some reason. Were you able to ask about that?
nemi2 - Sunday, December 24, 2023 - link
Pricing data point. Just built an epic 32/64 core 768mb L3 cache with 12 channel x 32gb ram workstation for $9000, could have saved some. Money off that if I had shopped around outside one main parts vendor.This is for simulation, need all the memory bandwidth we can get.
SanX - Thursday, December 28, 2023 - link
What simulation specifically?SanX - Thursday, December 28, 2023 - link
Pretty funny is that on EBAY there is little interest in numerous AMD 96-core EPYC 9654 which now go for less than $2k, all are paying twice or more for 48-core 9474F. Poor singe core performance at their low clocks is probably the reason. The cheap consumer 7995X beats them all here and is only 2-2.5 times slower at multithread at 5% the price according to cpubenchmark dot net websiteSanX - Thursday, December 28, 2023 - link
7950x not 7995x